So first: get your blood pressure under control. I'm not really telling you how to live your life. What I am telling you is that your impatience today does little to change the way that a decentralized system in its infancy actually works. Getting impatient about it doesn't help matters at all--in fact, it doesn't bother me at all, since I'm not going to go pay 1 BTC for a loaf of bread any time soon (considering that today's prices would get me 100 loaves of bread).
I am sorry??
So you can waste 1hour of your time to buy bread of several hours on the supermarket checkout queue?
Good for you, you probably don't have anything more interesting to do or maybe you just don't need to work for a living!
But most people can't wait that long and it is not consumerism, is just like money always worked, many transactions need to be instantaneous.
PERIOD
So, first: you're taking what I said extremely out of the context it was offered. But let's look at the absurdity of what you're suggesting:
We can't scan bread in the middle of the store and take it home because there is no trust. Consumerism has caused the idea that such a resource is scarce, that it must be protected at all costs, and so people in Greece rioted when free bread was handed out. Is that the waste you're talking about?
Or how about the waste of spending 2 hours in a checkout line, when we should be able to shop all the way through and simply verify a purchase for the items... it would take almost the same amount of time (and could be streamlined over time, I'm sure), though the process would be a little more efficient and there would be less of a tendency for dishonesty in the supermarket. It takes only a change in the way we think about things to make anything work... so your little diatribe actually doesn't apply all that well.
When we build personal trust into a system, then stores can offer their own credit to customers who have built up a reputation--no need for credit checks, just look at habits, which we can easily look at within a given store. This allows for a social aspect of currency.
Patience is a virtue. It breeds trust. Trust, in turn, breeds speed.
Are you saying that WE cannot have a decentralized system THAT confirms my transactions in 12-18seconds instead of 1hour.
Interesting...
Why is that?
Why is 10 minutes such a magical timeframe?
Why 10, and not 5 or 20?
Why would I say such a silly thing? I'm merely saying that being impatient about it doesn't help. If we had 3 billion people on this system, imagine how little time it would take to generate the confirmation. With more peers on the network, confirmation is a very simple matter, and will tend to take less time (not always, mind you, but in general).
10 minutes is an "average" under current conditions. In my own case, my first transaction took under 2 minutes. The bank transfer is still "pending" in my account, though the funds were already issued. How is that actually faster?
Nobody complained about that in this thread. I did not question bitcoin's security.
I just challenged its speed.
Speed reduces security. Security reduces speed. It's a computational rule.
Banks issue their money on my behalf because of trust. They know the money is there (they can see it). But they also want to give time for me to reverse the transaction. The banking system takes FAR longer than 10 minutes to actually transfer the funds (more like 2-4 business days); but because they are more established, they can issue funds based on the credited amount in my bank account.
Good for you, I am 1 week into trying to get some TBCs and it will probably take me a month more to be able to buy some. It is too difficult and SLOW and there are many untrustworthy and greedy intermediaries. Just like in the fiat world or even worse.
BTC doesn't really have much in the way of intermediaries... EVERYONE is potentially an intermediary. The confirmations happen transparently, based on the block and share records stored at random in each client. Not a lot of room for lacking trust there, though I'm sure someone will figure out a way to (temporarily) break it sooner or later. Perhaps by "intermediary" you are referring to the exchanges?
But that's the beauty of open source software. Even if someone figures out how to break it, the community of programmers who maintain it will generally jump at the chance to fix the problems very quickly, and restore the system's trust
Good for you again!
That use case is good for Bitcoin right now, and nobody here is trying to change those use cases.
What I am saying here is that either bitcoin should remove the word "instant" from their publicity or they should find a way to really allow "instant DECENTRALIZED payments" when they are needed.
I think that can be done with little redesign and cheap fees, more expensive than the traditional ones on the mining blockchain, but cheaper than those of Paypals, and VISAs.
Bitcoin is not a company. That would imply a central authority who is "in charge" of the currency. It's the swarm that's "in charge" of it, not a queen bee.
Cryptocurrency systems are not overseen by ANY central authority. If anyone says "instant" then it's that organization or individual, not the whole world of Bitcoin. If you're dissatisfied with it, stop trying to use it to buy bread at the store.
